Birthdays, Snow Days

Friday Finger Update: Aaron’s wounded finger is healing fine. The pain is much less and yesterday the hand doctor looked at it and gave him the okay to wear just a small bandage, get it wet, etc.

Joygirl is almost three! This weekend we are celebrating her birthday. She has been eagerly anticipating cake and being three. And we’ve explained to her how when you’re three there’s no more diapers and your taste buds change so you like more foods, like peanut butter. It’s common knowledge, right? (*cough cough*)

She will get a few small things from us, but I also made a donation to Ethiopian Orphan Relief in her honor, as I will continue to do each year. This is a nonprofit organization started by parents who adopted from Ethiopia (some of whom we got to know during our adoption process) that “works to improve the living conditions and lives of Ethiopian orphans remaining in Ethiopia by working with Ethiopian orphanages and adoption agency care houses to provide supplies, infrastructure and experiences.” I encourage you to check out their website and blog. And if you are a person who might feel compelled to send the Joygirl a card or gift, I’d be pleased if you’d like to donate the $5 or more to Ethiopian Orphan Relief instead.

But before there are birthdays, there are snow days! We got our first snow last night and it’s gorgeous. When didn’t get snow on the Oregon coast, really–a dusting would be a county-wide emergency–although AJ has seen snow before when we visited Michigan at Christmastime. But this is the first year she’s really old enough to want to play in it. I let her walk around outside for a few minutes last night when it was really coming down. (Sorry, the video clip I took is too big to upload here.) She wandered around in awe and shrieked at it hitting her in the face. I think our Oregonian college friend had just about the same happy reaction!

Then before dinner she was in my way and needed to do a job to get some toys back, so I had her put away the silverware:

Hope no one needed to find a fork.